Faction Question for Roleplayers - Min Maxers Need Not Apply

[Rader]

Couple of questions regarding faction:

Can a Human Bertoxx Cleric walk around Ak Anon freely and buy and sell?

Can a Human Rallos Zek Bard enter the Qeynos Catacombs?

[d3r14k]

Not a particularly helpful response but: You can always make a level 1, take a walk, and find out.

[Rader]

Yes, the bard question could be easily answered by creating a new toon, I guess, but the human bertoxx cleric in Ak Anon would be quite the run for a level one PC

[Lysander]

Human Bertox Cleric in Ak'Anon is almost certainly a yes, I have brought much more evil people to Ak'Anon that have passed through without a scratch. Ak'Anon is considered a neutral city, and is pretty tolerant, like Freeport. Humans also in general get a huge pass with good/neutral cities.

Rallos Zek Bard with the Bloodsabers I would guess probably not, but only a guess.

[NegaStoat]

Only marginally related to OP's questions -- A Dark Elf Necromancer or Shadowknight can get into Ak Anon's Dark Reflection guild area (using invis through the city up to that point) to use the merchants as well as train (for the necromancer) from the guild masters there. BUT!!! A wandering decaying skeleton that paths through the vendors and guild masters will aggro you (for not being a gnome, I guess) and the moment he swings at your Dark Elf, the necromancer guild masters will take offense and end your life on the spot. Been there, had it happen.

This is absolutely not classic but it's how P1999 currently has that part of the zone. So while your Human cleric of Uncle Berty might be friendly with the vendors and guild masters there, the wandering decaying might ruin your day. Good luck.

[elwing]

A human sk of Bertoxxulous is kos in ak'anon, so cleric, unsure but I suspect it can be kos... There's definitely the mine of malfunction inside that is a Bertoxxulous guild so you definitely won't be kos in this part, need an invis to reach it through.

[Rygar]

Only marginally related to OP's questions -- A Dark Elf Necromancer or Shadowknight can get into Ak Anon's Dark Reflection guild area (using invis through the city up to that point) to use the merchants as well as train (for the necromancer) from the guild masters there. BUT!!! A wandering decaying skeleton that paths through the vendors and guild masters will aggro you (for not being a gnome, I guess) and the moment he swings at your Dark Elf, the necromancer guild masters will take offense and end your life on the spot. Been there, had it happen.

This is absolutely not classic but it's how P1999 currently has that part of the zone. So while your Human cleric of Uncle Berty might be friendly with the vendors and guild masters there, the wandering decaying might ruin your day. Good luck.

Did you find sources on that / bug report?

[NegaStoat]

Did you find sources on that / bug report?
In my heart, I wasn't absolutely certain it was a bug due to the era. I recall playing a Dark Elf necromancer during Kunark and using Gather Shadows to enter the Mines of Malfunction to pick up level 12 spells while getting experience in Faydwer. Going off of memory, no decaying skeletons or rats or other mobs would path through the evil cleric / necromancer guild area, so I had no issues with buying or selling or using the gnome guild masters, the evil cleric guild masters included (they were indiff or better to me).

The issue here on P1999 is that we have spawn points and pathing that is absolutely not classic and I can't harp on the server staff too hard because it was a hell of a long time ago and we don't have archived info for much of that. Nearly all of the Kunark outdoor zones are incorrect, with Lake of Ill Omen and Swamp of No Hope being the big bones of contention with most players here (myself included). The Hole entrance earth elementals are spawned too close together and can't be single pulled like they could be on old retail. I could go on with other examples, like the Steamfont skeleton spawns being incorrect, etc. You get my point.

I don't absolutely know that the decaying skeletons on old retail weren't KOS to non gnomes because again, on old retail they weren't in the immediate area of the vendors.

[Tnair]

Ak'Anon clockwork guard/guide/spider faction (King Ak`Anon faction) started KoS to my agnostic dark elf rogue, as did the caster guild. Outside guards there are on the warrior guild faction and are not representative of most guards inside the city.

Human Rallos Zek bard will be safe in 90% of the catacombs (if you can fight the wildlife off) and will likely be murdered by the evil guilds in their area; but apart from wandering level 2 skeleton Ronn Castekin, you have to go into their special area to find any of them. You'll know it's not safe for your bard if he goes through a fake wall and the walls on the other side are covered in evil looking reddish runes. Level 30 Argyn Shieldstan wanders close to the "entrance" of that area so don't explore it, but he won't wander through the fake walls into the sewers proper.

[Swish2]

The Hole entrance earth elementals are spawned too close together and can't be single pulled like they could be on old retail.

This is an interesting one. I always remember the elementals pulling in pairs (opposite each other/LOS), but now I'm questioning myself.

[Quizlop]

For anyone wondering, a fresh Human Bard of Rallos Zek is Apprehensive to the Bloodsabers, and can walk around the Temple of Bertoxxulous freely.

[NegaStoat]

This is an interesting one. I always remember the elementals pulling in pairs (opposite each other/LOS), but now I'm questioning myself. It could be done if you pulled each one barely within LOS by using the alcove walls to cover 49% of your character upon the spell cast, roughly. I found out about the place for use to solo to 49 from the Magician's Tower web site at the time and abused it mercilessly with the highest level Ward Summon line of spells + the Elemental Maelstrom line for the initial damage as the DoT had less threat than an outright nuke. Reclaiming the pet wasn't especially safe to do until the first 4 were killed and you had more room to work with. This was on Brell Serilis server, pre Luclin.

The issue here on P1999 is that they are either spawned too close together OR the alcove walls don't block aggro correctly with drawn LOS of mobs and the caster OR telegraphed threat from an aggro'd mob is handled differently than an old retail server. I have no other explanation, but the world isn't going to come to an end that an Emu of an EQ server is going to have some differences. As a side note, once I leveled to 49 or 50 I swapped over to killing Felwithe guards as a magician because the guards would NOT cast any spells other buffs and self heals, and only at 25-30% remaining health. They never once cast root, dispels, or lay on hands or any other spells regardless if a pet was beating on them or not. That's one non-classic change I kind of like about P1999 involving casting mobs. They're actually extremely dangerous here.

[kaev]

You can do some face-pulling of singles here, but it's much less successful than it was on live. One of the best pullers I knew on live was a warrior. Here the only way to pull well as a warrior is if you've outlevelled the content. I don't think there's a sufficient restriction on the "yell for help" radius of the mobs when there is no agro other than proximity. On the same subject, proximity mattered more on live for agro while meleeing, even without root it was valuable for tanks to stand on the mobs and rogues/rangers to stay at the edge of melee range, here proximity has no apparent effect unless mob is rooted. You'll never find stuff like that written up tho, unless you track down a Verant dev who wants to talk about it.